Tuesday,
October 4, 2005 – from Hollywood, drive west on Sunset to the sea, then north at the very edge of the ocean on Pacific Coast Highway
to Malibu, turn right on Topanga Canyon Road.Drive far up into the mountains
on a twisting road with sharp drops into nasty, deep gorges if you're is not careful.Then the community of Topanga, about six thousand residents, and home to those who play by their own rules - once the
blacklisted in Hollywood, then counterculture types (Neil Young, Jim Morrison), now a mixture of folks who won't ever give
up the hippie thing, the rich, the famous and the eccentric.Topanga - an old Shoshonean word that can also be used in
reference to the sky or heaven. (More information hereand here.)

A full photo album, thirty-eight
shots, here. Below, in higher much higher resolution, what it looks like there…

Hungry
after the drive?Coffee, Food, Surfboards -

Who lives here, across this bridge made from an old boxcar?

Up the canyon, these folks just use an arch across Topanga Creek -

Up the road, the box office at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum- his outdoor theater for the blacklisted – a cliff-side amphitheater
founded by television's Grandpa Walton as a refuge for blacklisted actors, like him, in the McCarthy days.Geer was blacklisted from films and television for refusing to testify before Congress' House Un-American
Activities Committee.During Geer's life he and wife Herta Ware, who passed away
this summer, made this spot a guest home to friends like folk singer Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.Still in operation – with live theater and an annual blues festive.This summer they're doing A Midsummer Night's Dream, which seems appropriate.

Turn
left at the "Hair Man" to get to the Inn of the Seventh Ray on Old Topanga Canyon Road -

Buddha things and crystals
and incense - an outdoor restaurant with soft Asian "trance" music in the background - the Inn of the Seventh Ray - "We, at the
Inn, believe in giving you the purest of Nature's foods, energized as a gift from the sun with a dash of esoteric food knowledge
and ancient mystery school wisdom tossed in for your seasoning and pleasure. It may just raise your body's light vibration
and the extra work may cost you a few pennies more, but we believe in the long run, this way of living and eating may prove
less expensive. Your body elemental, that selfless, shy, invisible little fellow who works so hard to keep the oft mistreated
human machine going, will jump with joy for your choice of this eating establishment. He prays and hopes you will return
soon to make this a pleasant ritual with each return being a new celebration in honor of taking a small step on the path of
good dinning and good doing." Okay then. Stare at the trees.
Have an experience.

At
The Inn of the Seventh Ray - the expected bookstore and gift shop -

Far
out on Old Topanga Canyon Road,
"Rake Man" -

Far
out on Old Topanga Canyon Road,
a Studebaker Coupe from around 1953, which may not have moved since then -

The
Doors supposedly wrote "Roadhouse Blues" about the Topanga Corral. But it's gone now.But there is this "peace
flag" -

If
you use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me.